A SECOND HAND DEBAUCH.
It is possibly a finicky sort of a person who would object to trifles light as air; but there be breaths that are not as light as air, and they are no trifles. You travel second or third class, and there shall be nine sturdy Englishmen smoking short pipes, or villainous cigars, with their breaths ornamented with every variety of very bad liquor that the combined genius of the liquor compounders of all nations can produce. Likewise there are feet innocent of baths. If you happen to have an end seat you may let down the window and get fresh air, but heaven help you if you are in the middle. You inhale the fumes till a state approaching intoxication ensues, but you must sit there all the same, for there is no escape. Such a debauch may be cheap; but I never did like anything second-hand—second-hand intoxication least of all. I vastly prefer original sin. And then imagine the pleasure of traveling in such company as one must necessarily be thrown into by this system. The terrible tragedy on the Brighton road recently, gives a good idea of some of its beauties. A well-to-do merchant living in the country had been to London to make some sales of land, and was spotted by an impecunious wretch, who had previously known him. The merchant, whose name was Gold, left London on the afternoon train, and was alone in one of these compartments, securely locked with the villain, whose name was Lefroy. It seems from the facts of the case, as gathered by the police, that while between two stations Lefroy attacked Gold. There was a violent struggle, during the course of which Lefroy killed Gold, rifled the body and threw it out of the window, as it was found by the road side. When the guard unlocked the compartment at the next station Lefroy invented some flimsy story about some mysterious shooting, to account for the presence of the blood, and actually made his escape. It is comforting to know that afterward Lefroy was caught, tried and hung. England does hang murderers.
How utterly impossible such a tragedy would have been in an American car. But here the victim had absolutely no way of calling for or obtaining assistance. The two were alone, locked in the compartment, and the cries of the wretched man as he realized his danger, were drowned by the noise of the train thundering along at sixty miles an hour.
But to return to Portsmouth. The scenery from London is charming. The train rushes along, after leaving the fog and smoke of London in the rear, through the garden land of England. The fields are all cultivated, the farm houses, ancient and peculiar, have an air of solidity and comfort, and an occasional castle lends variety to the scene and makes the picture perfect.
The towns through which the road passes are, of course, all very old. They abound in red-tiled houses of antique pattern, narrow streets, that at the end of the village lose themselves in beautiful lanes, fringed on either side with long rows of stately trees that shade the close-cut hawthorne hedges. But over all these is an air of age. Everything is finished. Everything is complete. We have visited so many old towns, and inspected so many old buildings, that it would be a positive relief to see a brand new house, painted white, with green shutters, whose gable roof glistens in the sunlight with its new pine shingles. But, alas! that cannot be. Here everything is old and purely English.
Portsmouth was reached after a delightful run of two and a half hours, and soon after we were snugly quartered in the queerest hostelry imaginable, our comfortable room overlooking an arm of the sea, upon which were all manner of craft, from the diminutive dory to the massive merchantman.
NELSON’S SHIP.